Generally, a refrigerator is an apparatus that may keep food fresh for a certain duration by cooling a storage compartment (e.g. a freezing compartment or a refrigerating compartment) while repeating a refrigeration cycle.
The refrigerator includes a compressor, which compresses refrigerant, circulating through a refrigeration cycle, into high-temperature and high-pressure refrigerant. The refrigerant compressed in the compressor cools air while passing through a heat exchanger, and the cooled air is supplied to the freezing compartment or the refrigerating compartment.
The refrigerator has a configuration in which the freezing compartment is at the upper side and the refrigerating compartment is at the lower side. A side by side type refrigerator may be configured such that the freezing compartment and the refrigerating compartment are arranged on the left and right sides, respectively, so as to be adjacent to each other.
In addition, there is another type of refrigerator in which a single storage compartment, provided in the upper or lower region of the refrigerator, may be opened by two doors, which are arranged side by side.
In the case where two doors are arranged side by side to open or close a single storage compartment, a pillar is installed on one of the two doors. The pillar is provided only at one of the two doors and is configured to come into contact with the two doors when the two doors close the storage compartment, thereby functioning to improve the sealing efficiency of the storage compartment.
According to the related art, generally, in order to rotate the pillar, a configuration including a protrusion and a guide groove is formed in an inner case of the refrigerator so as to guide the rotation of the pillar.
With the related art, therefore, a user suffers from inconvenience when using the storage compartment because the configuration for guiding the rotation of the pillar needs to be formed so as to protrude downward from the top of the inner case.
In addition, in the state in which the door provided with the pillar hermetically seals the storage compartment, the pillar is unfolded away from the corresponding door, and may block the path along which a drawer installed in the refrigerator moves. Therefore, when two drawers are installed parallel to each other, it is necessary to provide the two drawers with different widths.
In addition, it is necessary to form a basket installed on the door such that a corner of the basket defines a gently curved surface so as not to come into contact with the unfolded pillar when the basket is rotated along with the door. This may problematically cause a reduction in the storage capacity of the basket.